Talk:France and weapons of mass destruction

Fernando Pereira

It is impossible that the Fernando Pereira that is the current destination of this link could be the Fernando Pereira mentioned in this entry. One died in 1972, the other led a revolution in 2003.

Mihoshi 20:35, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

fixed. Get-back-world-respect 15:20, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

David McTaggart

"The skipper, David McTaggart, was beaten and severely injured by members of the French military." Such a sentence may be misleading without context. Was McTaggart beaten when helpless, or did he try to resist arrest? Do we have other testimonies apart from McTaggart's on this? David.Monniaux 15:24, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

"Mr McTaggart returned to the atoll, but was captured and beaten up by French military officers." BBC "He and his crew were physically assaulted by the French military. Although this charge was later denied, it was captured on camera by a crew member. The subsequent litigation against the French government, and the corresponding publicity, played a major part in the French decision to end their nuclear testing programme." I once saw a picture of his black eye on television. He reportedly could not see for a while. Get-back-world-respect 16:01, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

operation vulture

I removed the following four paragraphs:

In May 1954 the French were losing the war in Indochina against Ho Chi Minh. At the height of the decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu France's nuclear bosses sent a request to the chairman of the British Atomic Energy Authority. It was a shopping list of items that would help them build nuclear weapons, including a sample quantity of plutonium "so we can take the steps preparatory to the utilisation of our own plutonium". Britain had exploded its own bomb less than two years earlier and so they realised the significance of the request.

Before the letter even arrived the French had lost the battle and the war but later that year the French prime minister, Pierre Mendes France, made the formal decision to build the atomic bomb. Britain agreed to supply the requested nuclear materials, including enriched uranium. Among the most important parts of the agreement was an arrangement for the British to check the blueprints and construction of French plutonium production reactors.

According to one source, this not only helped the French get their military plutonium reactor at Marcoule into operation quickly but it also averted a disaster, for the British found defects which could have caused a catastrophic explosion at the Rhone Valley site. The same source says that when Charles de Gaulle came to power in 1958 he personally thanked Harold Macmillan for the team's work.

There remained France's request for plutonium. In 1955 Britain agreed to export ten grams but "we would not tell the US that we were going to give the French plutonium nor about any similar cases". [1]

The single source given cites "secret documents" and unnamed informants as a basis for these claims. While the story they picture may (or not) reflect the true story, I don't think it's good policy to base an article on what sounds like a conspiracy theory. Anyone thinking of reverting should consider maybe trying to find independent confirmation or corroboration of these claims. 24.201.30.153 05:21, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I've reinstated the paragraphs. I agree with you about conspiracy theories but this isn't one of them. The papers were all released to the BBC by UKAEA/MoD et.c under Freedom of Information. It was a very small part of the much larger story on Britain's help for Israel's Nuclear Weapons programme which was broadcast on BBC Newsnight in March and picked up by thousands of outlets TV/Radio/Newspapers/Internet. Noone has challenged the valildity of any of the documents which were supplied by various branches of UK government. The French story was not surprisingly overlooked in the bigger picture about Britain and Israel. The BBC and New Statesman saw all the documents before the story was published. You're welcome to have copies of any of the documents that you request but given that you think everything's a conspiracy theory if you tell me what you want I can give you the exact reference and you can directly request those documents from UKAEA/MoD yourself. For instance the original request from France to Britain is in the UKAEA Heavy Water 1952-57 file titled "Translation of a letter to Sir E Plowden from Messrs, Guillaumat & Perrin dated May 6th 1954" As I have already had the documents declassified this should be a very swift routine process. Newsnightmeirion 17:05, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I googled for details and didn't really find anything to support those claims except stories directly related to the New Statesman article. In any case, I think you should at least rephrase the passage, because as it is now, it follows awkwardly (IMO) from the previous paragraph. And, unless I'm mistaken, it's lifted directly from the article, although I suppose this would fall under the definition of fair use. Regarding evidence, if you have any link pointing to independent corroboration, that would be great. I must confess I don't care enough to go to the trouble of contacting a foreign government agency. :-) 24.201.30.153 05:40, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

A few more things. First, the New Statesman claims the UK gave France a few grams of plutonium, among other, unspecified items, but the importance of this is unclear considering that, according to the article, "[t]he first French reactor went critical in 1948 and first plutonium was extracted in 1949". Furthermore, [2] (linked in the Wikipedia article) states that "Official approval for developing nuclear weapons was not authorized until late 1954, even though by then the necessary plutonium production program was well advanced." If France first extracted plutonium in 1949 and had an established plutonium production program by, at the latest, late 1954, why the need for British plutonium, much less enriched uranium?

Also, a quick google shows the French nuclear program to have a long and pretty well documented history. I don't think claims of British assistance, justified though they may be, should take up almost half the Wikipedia article. The Indochina War bit seems especially off-topic. You appear to care about the article, so I'll leave it up to you to present the possible British ascendency of the French nuclear program in a more appropriate manner. 24.201.30.153 06:15, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

We can all agree that a longer article on French WMD would be better. The way to achieve this is not by cutting what little is already there but by adding more sections perhaps written by the people who have created the excellent French version of this site. I only dealt with the area on which I have expertise and which has only recently been revealed. I am of course not sugggesting that British help was a major factor in the French Bomb. It was not.

You say you don't understand plutonium or the significance of the Indo China War so let me explain. The French had experimentally extracted minute quantities of plutonium in the late 1940s and the "program was well advanced" in the sense that they had committed to building production reactors at Marcoule but these did not come on stream till 1956. That is why the French wanted small quantities of British plutonium for preliminary weapons design work in 1954-55. They also wanted the designs of those reactors checked by the British. It was the loss of Indo China which convinced Pierre Mendes France at the end of 1954 to go ahead with the Bomb programme in the hope that France would still be regarded as a great power.

Factual articles in the New Statesman are a perfectly good source and I have also offered you a way of independently verifying any facts which you are unsure of. Newsnightmeirion 07:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

What I meant is that it's not clear from the Wikipedia article what significance the British assistance, namely providing plutonium and enriched uranium, has, in light of France's successful extraction of plutonium 5 years earlier. The information you provided in your reply should be presented in the article itself and not on the discussion page. 24.201.30.153 17:19, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Added in French hydrogen bomb and reverted nuclear to atomic where necessary. Newsnightmeirion 07:22, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

"It was the loss of Indo China which convinced Pierre Mendes France at the end of 1954 to go ahead with the Bomb programme in the hope that France would still be regarded as a great power. " : No, this is purely bullshit. There is strictly not a link between Indochina and french nuclear program, which started after WWII. There is also no link whatsoever between France great power status (with a GDP at that time superior to UK GDP, a nice growth and so on...) and Indochina ! This article furthermore rely on fantasy sources... Someone to clean this mess up ? 90.41.148.222 12:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC) For these reasons, removed the four paragraph for lacking any reliable source...90.41.148.222 13:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to be factual but it was the loss of Indo China which finally convinced Pierre Mendes France to go ahead with the Bomb at a cabinet meeting on 26 December 1954 although I am sure there were many other factors. However the article does not make this claim - it is only on this talk page so why did you remove the paragraphs from the article? Of course France was already involved in nuclear research - and not just after WW2. I regard France as being the leading country in nuclear research BEFORE WW2 and of course French scientists played their part DURING WW2 as part of the British-Canadian contribution to the Manhattan Project. The post war nuclear programme started to set in place the necessary infrastructure for a Bomb programme - as the request to the UK shows - but no formal decision to go for a Bomb was taken before December 26th 1954. You need to have another look at your GDP figures - I suggest OECD or Eurostat - no serious economist has suggested French GDP was bigger than the UK's in the 1950s. In 1954 for instance the UK GDP was 50% bigger than France's - according to the OECD's World Economy: Historical Statistics. UK GDP was bigger than France's through the 50s and 60s - France overtook UK and stayed ahead through the 70s, 80s and 90s and UK only overtook France again this century. Please source any of your statements or explain exactly which of my sources you think are "fantasy" beofre vandalising articles. Newsnightmeirion 11:14, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

1) "Sorry to be factual but it was the loss of Indo China which finally convinced Pierre Mendes France to go ahead with the Bomb at a cabinet meeting on 26 December 1954 although I am sure there were many other factors". No. There is no link between Indochina and the nuclear program, no "serious historian" can claim that. The only source about that is nuclearweaponarchive.org, but they themselves lacks credible sources and are not neutral on this topic. Their articles are excellent on some technical aspects, but are highly debatable on political points, like the one we are discussing about; the "romantic" style of the article add another problem to the validity of this website as a good source on political/historical angles. De Gaulle created the CEA on october 1945 in order to give France not only a civil nuclear program, but also a nice place to a military program, which had a troubled history and experienced incredible delays; it explains why De Gaulle "ordonnance" of 1945 states that the CEA "pursue technical and scientific research for use of atomic energy in science, industry, and national defense.": the last of these terms is not what we could qualify as peaceful civilian goal. One of the leading scientist, (in fact, the high commisionner), of the CEA was Frederic Joliot, the one whose researches where funded by the french ministry of defence in 1939 to explore the explosive capacity of uranium; he deposed some patents on this topic with Halban and Kowarski. Considering all this facts, it is clear that stating "the war in Indochina is the event which pushed french gov to go ahead with the bomb" is an more an opinion or a joke than a fact, on a sensitive subject already over-saturated with rumors.

2) "Please source any of your statements or explain exactly which of my sources you think are "fantasy" beofre vandalising articles." Why these paragraphs are a piece of fantasy, X-Files or BS ? Ok, but this was already nicely written by another contributor: "The single source given cites "secret documents" and unnamed informants as a basis for these claims. While the story they picture may (or not) reflect the true story, I don't think it's good policy to base an article on what sounds like a conspiracy theory. Anyone thinking of reverting should consider maybe trying to find independent confirmation or corroboration of these claims. " :D

=> A single source with "secret document" and "unnamed informant" is NOT a valid source, but clearly is a fantasy one. This is hypothesis added to hypothesis; a nice mental construction, a nice scenario for Lost, Heroes or Veronica Mars, but this is not reality.

This article is not yours, it is a collective work. Some people here edited this article three or four times, deleting some higly fantasmatic paragraphs, but each time you reversed it because you don't seem to understand that :

- there is no link between war in Indochina and France's nuke program;

- a single new statesman article based on smoke and rumors is not a valid source.

What is great with Wikipedia is that the average teenager can claim a total control over an article to publish anything he wants, blocking edition to what he like or not. Great, but nor really serious. I don't want to launch an edit war, so, you win, and this article will still continue to propagate absolute bullshit. Nice work ! ;) 90.36.78.180 19:33, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

ANOTHER PATIENT EXPLANATION... I wish I was still a teenager but I'm happy to see you've abandoned your original claims. You claimed that France in the 1950s had "a GDP at that time superior to UK GDP" . I assume you now realise along with the rest of us that that was untrue. You claimed that the French nuclear programme "started after WWII" . You now seem to accept what I was saying - and what the article says - about the French lead in nuclear research BEFORE WWII and the French element in the Anglo-Canadian part of the Manhattan Project DURING WWII. The pre-war French effort was stage 1. The Montreal work was stage 2. De Gaulle's programme was stage 3 but he was out of office within a year. All the dozens of countries which launched nuclear programmes after the war had one eye on national defence - like de Gaulle - but only nine of them led to the production of weapons. In any case although the communist Frederick Joliot Curie built a first reactor in 1948 there was no way he was going to build a Bomb which might target Russia. Stage 4 was when Pierre Gillaumat took over from Frederick and set out his plan for nuclear energy in 1951 which led to the building of the Marcoule reactors. The Mendes-France decision in 1954 was stage 5 - and it was crucial. All sources (even boring old Encyclopaedia Britannica) agree that was the first unambiguous commitment to make French nuclear weapons. This is what the CNRS history says "la réunion inter-ministérielle du 26 décembre 1954 envisage la préparation d'un prototype d'arme nucléaire". The Suez collapse in 1956 and the return of De Gaulle in 1958 quickened the pace. The factual New Statesman cover article was a perfectly good source. It wasn't based on smoke and rumours but on old yellowing pieces of paper in a newly declassified file held in the National Archives in London. In those files is an official letter from Pierre Guillaumat head of the French nuclear programme detailing the nuclear materials which he needs. The rest of the file records the British meetings in response and the final agreement to supply the nuclear materials and expertise to France. In the sixteen months since the article was published nobody has challenged the authenticity of the letters. It would be difficult to think of a more authoritative source than the head of the French nuclear programme. The links between Dien Bien Phu and the decision to build a protoype Bomb seem obvious to me and to many others who have looked at the issue over the years. For starters Mendes-France would not even have been in position as Prime Minister to make that decision on 26th December if Dien Bien Phu hadn't caused Laniel's government to fall in June and Mendes France to be appointed. Secondly there were factions in the French government who felt that the Americans had unfairly denied them the support of nuclear weapons in Vietnam and therefore the French would now need to build their own Bombs. Thirdly there is Guillaumat's letter written to the British written at the height of the battle. Fourthly the French Chiefs of Staff were told to start looking at what they would need for a home grown Force de Frappe within weeks of Dien Bien Phu. Your statement "There is no link between Indochina and the nuclear program" does not stand up. After all the subsequent decolonisation it is difficult to realise the impact that Dien Bien Phu had in 1954. A colony had defeated a supposed major world power for the first time. But there are other factors in the mix - German rearmament and Algeria amongst others - which is precisely why the main article does not go so far as to say explicitly "It was the loss of Indo China which convinced Pierre Mendes France at the end of 1954 to go ahead with the Bomb". I only mentioned that in the discussion on this Talk page. It appears to me and to many others including NuclearWeaponArchive, Wolf Mendl et al to be true but in my view the evidence for the conclusion is not quite strong enough to put that in the main article. If you think I am motivated by some desire to put down the French or exaggerate British achievements I can assure you that is not the case. (If only we had a rail system like yours) I repeat that I am not suggesting that British help made a huge difference to the French nuclear programme. If you look back at all my edits to France and Weapons of Mass Destruction I think you will see that. Unfortunately I cannot look back at the many articles which you have contributed to because you constantly change your username. That is often an indication of a vandal but I am going to be charitable and just assume you can't remember your passwords.Newsnightmeirion 13:48, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I do take issue with your single source. Your argument appears to be completely invalidated by Keith Baum's publication of "Two's Company, Three's a Crowd: The Eisenhower Administration, France and Nuclear Weapons". In essence, England did not help France with the development of nuclear power or weapons. In fact they did the opposite; by working with the Eisenhower administration, they attempted to make it as difficult as possible for France to develop nuclear weapons. The other issue I have with your argument is that Britain was hardly at the forefront of nuclear technology after the war, and only became acquainted with the technology after the US loosened restrictions on the transfer nuclear technology. However, that would have made them 'newbies' in the field--not experts; hardly the position of assisting others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.115.159.53 (talk) 14:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

B2-Namous top secret base

found infos regarding a top secret base in french algeria called "B2-Namous" and located somewhere between Colomb Béchar and the Morrocan border. rumors are about chemical warfare dev among others and that the base was still active after the algerian independence. does anyone has reliable infos regarding this? Cliché Online 22:36, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

it was real. i saw it in an archive video featuing the defense minister: video availble here: ESSAIS CHIMIQUES ALGERIE, so my source was actually serious. Cliché Online 10:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

the dien bien phu part is a joke

this section should be removed, it is based on a biaised rumor. antother point is it was the american COS that offered the french to use a nuclear bomb at dien bien phu but the french refused, as did eisenhower and churchill. Shame On You 22:33, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

My friend you have a strange sense of humour. If you read the discussion above and the New Statesman article which is cited - you can just read the last bit which deals with the French if you find it too onerous to read the whole thing - you will realise that this is all from the original correspondence between the French and British authorities which has now been declassified. The French weren't asking Britain to supply them with a finished atom bomb at that time they were asking for help to speed up their military and civil nuclear programmes which they thought would maintain their Great Power status. Newsnightmeirion 09:39, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this Dien bien phu part is a kinda joke. Linking a nuclear program to a far and not profitable colony is somewhat laughable. The author seems to forgot that French governments, like their counterparts, may have rational reasons to act, not only "prestige" or "being regarded as a great power" or other childish reasons teached to 4th-grade students, but most probably "national interest", "self-preservation in cold war times against the USSR", and maybe "autonomy from the USA" 90.41.148.222 12:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, please. "autonomy from the USA"? Show me one instance of the USA attempting to annex France, from WWII to today. What you actually mean by "autonomy" is precisely "prestige" or "being regarded as a great power", that is, having distance between it and the USA's foreign policies. It's silly things like this and leaving NATO because they couldn't deal with being second to USA that France gets made fun of. 121.108.242.207 (talk) 12:16, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Get your facts straight, France never left Nato. Oh, and about annexion, isn't it silly that the surname of UK is the 51st state? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.115.28.42 (talk) 16:05, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Then again, perhaps the French wanted a nuclear weapons program because they were tired of being "cheese eating surrender monkeys". — Rickyrab | Talk 22:28, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Merging proposal

The article "France and wmd" and "Force de frappe" talk about two aspect of the same subject, one of it is the relation of France and wmd and the second one is about the wmds themselves. I think we should merge the Force de frappe article into a section of this article. The choice of the destination article is based about the fact that the other title is in french and France and WMD seems to be include in some sort of X and WMD series. -- Esurnir 15:27, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

What has been the practice for other nations on Wikipedia? Does the US get its own article like this and another article on its nuclear strategic capabilities? If the latter is the case, then the status quo should remain, otherwise there'd be nothing wrong with merging.UberCryxic 15:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Esurnir - there is also a good site on the French Wikipedia about the Force de Frappe - I have no objection to merging all three articles - in English and French - for that matter we could reintegrate Gerboise Bleue and Operation Canopus as well - but I am not sure how that would fit with rules of the Military History Project - maybe you need to ask them. I'm only interested in the content I don't care what heading it comes under.Newsnightmeirion 21:30, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I would have thought that the two article more suited to merging are France and weapons of mass destruction with France and nuclear weapons.Mombas 23:19, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Disagree. Force de frappe should be merged in France and nuclear weapons, and the latter kept a sub-article of France & WMD. France & nuclear weapons is at least as much related as Nuclear power in France than to "France & WMD".Tazmaniacs 07:26, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Seeing consensus here and the need to update the article(s) to reflect recent annuoncement about force size, I was WP:BOLD and merged France and nuclear weapons into France and weapons of mass destruction. Madcoverboy (talk) 20:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Atmospheric tests at Mururoa & Fangataufa

"A fission device ignited a lithium 6 deuteride secondary inside a jacket of highly enriched uranium to create a 2.6 megaton blast which left the whole atoll uninhabitable because of radioactive contamination."

This does not seem to be supported by the IAEA report posted here: [3] Poolcode (talk) 16:20, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

wikileaks

Why are we quoting wikileaks here in the wikipedia?????? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.227.163.100 (talk) 14:40, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposed merge with France's nuclear testing series

Subject does not require a separate article; can be merged into France and weapons of mass destruction Cheers AKS 10:02, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

My only concern, as principle author of the pages (France, Great Britain and China) that are being petitioned to be merged into the larger articles, is that there is a hierarchical architecture built with the smaller articles. By accessing the article Worldwide nuclear testing counts and summary, there are links there to the articles in question (as well as to equivalent pages for the US, USSR, Pakistan, India and North Korea). Perhaps they, too, need integration into more general articles. The last step in the hierarchy is that those pages contain links to the test series level for each of the countries, on which individual tests are specified.

This hierarchy is not, of course, negated by the merge, though the clearness of it will not be as apparent, but that seems a minor point. If someone decides to perform the merge, my only request of it is that the table in the merged-in page be placed with a header such that a direct link to the table can be established. More than that, I have no particular stance against the merges.

I will place pointers to the comments here on the other discussions for merging these pages. SkoreKeep (talk) 09:14, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Oppose There is an article hierarchy here, and both the testing and the development nuclear weapons warrant their own articles. Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:25, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Support The hierarchy will be be maintained by the redirects. I agree that each testing programme warrants its own article, but at present, only lists exist. Merge doesn't prevent the future creation of articles under the same titles, and indeed I would encourage it. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 11:37, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

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Requested move 6 December 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Lightoil (talk) 05:05, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

---

• Russia and weapons of mass destruction → Russia and nuclear weapons
• Nuclear weapons of the United States → United States and nuclear weapons
• Nuclear weapons of the United Kingdom → United Kingdom and nuclear weapons
• France and weapons of mass destruction → France and nuclear weapons
• China and weapons of mass destruction → China and nuclear weapons
• Nuclear weapons and Israel → Israel and nuclear weapons
• North Korea and weapons of mass destruction → North Korea and nuclear weapons
• India and weapons of mass destruction → India and nuclear weapons
• Pakistan and weapons of mass destruction → Pakistan and nuclear weapons

– Trying to get some consistency in the naming. Regarding the articles curretly having "weapons of mass destruction" in the title, most or all of the content is about nuclear weapons, with a passing mention of non-nuclear WMDs. For example, there is a short section at France_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Non-nuclear_WMD. For Pakistan, there isn't even that. Of course, a separate article that covers all of the WMDs can be created, but I think it is better to move the history to the nuclear weapons article since that is most of the article's content. Non-nuclear WMDs are a notable topic, but they pale in comparison with nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons can obliterate a city of millions in seconds, and whether a country has them has enormous geopolitical implications, which can't be said for non-nuclear WMDs. I think that deserves an article of its own. I propose the naming "Country and nuclear weapons", but I am open to other suggestions. Vpab15 (talk) 00:06, 6 December 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 14:40, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Oppose. It is good to use consistent format, but some of these articles are about the broader topic, and ought to be titled as such. If there’s a reason to do it, then the NW section can be split off from WMD, summary style, and we’d have both versions. In the naming WP:CRITERIA, consistency comes after precision.  —Michael Z. 19:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Please note there is a Category:Weapons of mass destruction by country that contained a Category:Nuclear weapons by country, and plenty of articles or subcategories in each.  —Michael Z. 14:08, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Oppose. As with previous comment, there is a difference between WMD and nuclear weapons. There could be a series of articles XX and nuclear weapons, but some of those would have to be narrower than the existing XX and WMD articles, which would need to remain as separate articles. NPguy (talk) 20:07, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Support. It is better if the title of the articles listed here should be country name first then nuclear weapons rather than country name first then weapons of mass destruction. KevinNov3 (talk) 09:44, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• The main change I would support is for cases where there is no significant disagreement in independent RS about the possession of nuclear weapons, we use the same format as when nuclear weapons are acknowledged. I believe the current titles are messy, confusing, and contravene the NPOV principle that we should avoid stating facts as opinions. (t · c) buidhe 00:25, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

  @Buidhe All the countries in the request have nuclear weapons, there is overwhelming evidence for all of them, including from nuclear tests, which is covered in the articles. Vpab15 (talk) 23:12, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

  Yes so there is no need for the weird circumlocution in the article titles. Just "France's weapons of mass destruction" or "nuclear weapons of Israel" would be better. (t · c) buidhe 23:20, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

  Canada and weapons of mass destruction, for example, is chiefly not about Canada’s weapons of mass destruction. See also nuclear sharing.  —Michael Z. 03:17, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. @NPguy: @Mzajac: I understand the concerns about re-scoping, but as mentioned in the nomination, the idea was to move the articles to "nuclear weapons" so as to better preserve the history. I have asked at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves if there is any guideline of what to do in cases like this. Setting those cases aside, do you agree with the name "X country and nuclear weapons" for the moves where there is no change of scope? Vpab15 (talk) 23:09, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

  In cases where the subject of the article only concerns nuclear weapons I support the move.  —Michael Z. 03:09, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

  I oppose that move and support "Nuclear weapons of X country", per Nuclear weapons of the United States, Nuclear weapons of the United Kingdom, etc. (t · c) buidhe 03:12, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I have crossed out the articles covering WMDs and leave the ones that seem to have consensus to move: i.e, the ones for the US, UK and Israel. I will create a new article for the remaining countries covering just nuclear weapons after the move request is closed. Vpab15 (talk) 22:02, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

• Still Oppose There's a difference between "nuclear weapons of XX" and "XX and nuclear weapons." The articles with the former formulation are entirely about the known stockpiles of those countries. They are not about broader issues of global nuclear weapons policy, as the alternative title might imply. The one with the latter formulation is Israel, whose ambiguous/opaque policy about whether it has nuclear weapons seems to call for different wording. NPguy (talk) 23:38, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think any country has a public inventory of their nuclear weapons, so there is opacity for all cases. I can't see how Israel's case is different in any meaningful way. Vpab15 (talk) 23:45, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

  Israel's opacity is distinct and fundamental. It won't say whether or not it has nuclear weapons. All the other states have openly tested them. NPguy (talk) 21:49, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

  The government of Israel is not a reliable source, so what they say is not as important as what reliable sources say. And they unambiguously say that Israel has nuclear weapons. Vpab15 (talk) 12:23, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

  We don’t need a primary-source public inventory to know which states have nuclear weapons or use the presumed possession of them as a nuclear deterrent. The subject of nuclear weapons is inherently about deterrence and a posture relative to other states’ nuclear capability, so I would be fine with all of those articles were titles XX and n.w.  —Michael Z. 17:31, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. All pages suggested to rename are about all types of WMD, not just the nuclear weapons. This proposal has nothing to do with consistent naming. Just the opposite.My very best wishes (talk) 01:47, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I see that such pages were already striked through and no longer a part of the ongoing RfC. OK. My very best wishes (talk) 04:44, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose WMDs and Nuclear Weapons are two different things and both are equally relevant for their mention in the article title. Dympies (talk) 12:31, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

  @Dympies the request is about moving the articles that only cover nuclear weapons. The article covering WMDs are crossed out and no longer part of the move request. Vpab15 (talk) 14:25, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

  Historically, they kept WMDs so I still don't feel like supporting the proposed moves. Dympies (talk) 14:41, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

  I am afraid I don't understand your comment. Do you oppose the move of the articles covering nuclear weapons for the US, UK and Israel? If so, could you explain the reason? The proposal as it stands now doesn't involve any article covering WMDs in general. Vpab15 (talk) 18:56, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.